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This week's bonkers firm has promoted its legal services by featuring an astronaut hitting a golf ball from the Moon to Earth.

On its website, Parisian-based firm, Fairway, says that "fairness" is key for the firm:

Pushing the wordplay a bit more, the firm's website says that Fairway, achieves deals that are "fair":

And just in case you missed it, Fairway rams it home:

A marketing bod at the firm realised that there was more potential to the name, as Fairway can also refer to the main stretch of a golf course. So, naturally, the firm's website features a video of an astronaut hitting a golf ball from the Moon, through space, onto Earth and into Fairway's office, to represent, erm ... a golf "fairway" across the planets. And nothing to do with law. Cue video.

Comments

Roll On Friday 06 Jul 18

*sigh*Great, thanks, i'm going to spend all morning pondering whether this is actually possible. Given the moon's low gravity, could a decent hit with a suitable driver actually achieve escape velocity? If it did so, then leaving aside orbital periods, manual speed/distance/timing judgments and the difficulties involved in delivering a precise stroke which would bring the ball into Earth's gravity, could this actually be done?I'm saying yes. Yes, I think this is possible. Obvs, 3Dux is possibly the only human who could achieve it.

Thanks to the power of the Google, cut & paste and a trainee who is temporarily out of work because the copier is busted, I can confirm as follows:

"The escape velocity from the surface of the moon is approximately 2380 m/s. In conclusion I think it is obvious to the most casual observer that it is not possible for a human to drive a golf ball at these speeds. No, you cannot hit a golf ball into orbit on the moon."

"The escape velocity from the surface of the moon is approximately 2380 m/s. In conclusion I think it is obvious to the most casual observer that it is not possible for a human to drive a golf ball at these speeds. No, you cannot hit a golf ball into orbit on the moon."

Your trainee did not spend enough time on Google. The average velocity of a golf ball (on earth) is 340km/h, which I calculate to be 5,666 m/s.

Anon 10:31 - it may be possible in reduced gravity and with no atmosphere to get a really good swing on the golf club. I believe speeds of up to 150 metres a second would be feasible. Actually, nix that - gravity probably helps to get a better swing by accelerating the downwards motion of the club.

However, the moon's rotation also gives a boost. The moon rotates approximately once every 27 days upon its axis, which equates to 2 x pi / (27 * 24 * 60 * 60) = 0.000002 radians per second. As the moon's radius is 1,737,000 metres, at the moon's equator, this gives a boost of an extra 3 metres a second. The remaining 5,567m/s come from building a tower to both increase this boost, and to reduce the required escape velocity, of height h, where 0.000002h = 5567 - 5,6667/(sqrt(1,737,000) x sqrt(1,737,000/h), or a mere 227,000 kilometres.